First time fiberglassing

So I am doing my first enclosure for my 10W7 and things are doing great, but there has to be an easier way to do this. I'll just let pictures show you my progress. You will see, after 6 layers of fiberglass, I have found out that the fiberglass has not been contact with the enclosure and has just built up, how should I fix this?










I have to finish bondo and sand and then I'm still debating if I want to finish with a paint or carpet in black.

First thing is you should have pulled the fleece/cloth tighter, creases in the fabric before wetting it w/ resin is bad and will be a pita to smooth out. As far as sealing it you shold have it stapled to the back/bottom/side of the mdf to hold the fabric down. After that make sure you have applied generous ammounts of resin to the edges where the cloth and mdf first contact. This will provide a good sealing. If this still does not satisfy you you can always resin/caulk the inside creases of the box too.

Ok, as you see some of the fiberglass didn't attach to the first layer of resin, so it just kept building up on the first fiberglass layer so I would have a big hole there, but the resin made contact with the wood, so basically I only have the strength of resin in that spot. Do you think I should sand it all the way back down to get down to the resin again and then re-fiberglass that whole thing, or am I able to leave it and just fiberglass from the inside that spot and don't need to sand that down.

Always sand inbetween layers of fg. Put down a layer or two and sand a bit (just enough w/ 50grit paper to take of the shine of the resin). Holes/bubles in your fiberglass is bad it equals weakness in that area. Be careful of this, I would sand that buble/hole down and refiberglass that area. You want your box to have a fairly even thickness. As far as sealing goes go back and soak the seal inside of the box with resin. This should hold the seal and even give some more support to the area around the edge.
As far as a finish goes, I'd bondo it sand it till it's smooth then paint it. You have a lot of curves there so putting carpet down will be tough (keeping out creases).
If you are goin to totally redo the fiberglass then you should start over, stripping and then redoing is hard work and probably will still end up w/ errors doing that. Good luck

I don't need to redo the whole enclosure, just the small front part where the fiberglass isn't on the resin. Should I sand that down, or am I able just to fiberglass it from the inside in that spot, it touches everywhere else on the enclosure, just not that small couple spots.

I'm not an expert on fiberglassing but some gut feeling is telling me that sanding those few spots down and redoing the fiberglass there is a bad idea. I can see a bad situation occuring here.

I would recommend rabbetting the outer edge of the box MDF with a router and either staple or hot glue the fleece into the rabbet to secure it in place. if you can make the rabbet the desired thickness of your glass, then it also helps to gauge how close you are to finished with the box if you lay it down correctly. as for grinding down the glass and laying more over it, that should work but make sure you have a good bond with the glass that is already there... overlap it a little bit and make sure you rough up the glass that it is bonding to, i've done that with reasonably good results. good luck.

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2000 Chevrolet S10
Premier DEH-P860MP
JL Audio XR650-CSi components
Boston 4x6 splits
JL Audio 10W3v2
Alpine MRP-M350
Clarion APA-4162

I believe the reason why your fg didn't lay down flat with the first layer is because you didn't use enough resin. You have to drench your fg mat then press is down with your brush to make sure it doesn't lift up.

As for the rescue of your project, is it bubbling up anywhere else on the enclosure? If not then I would just screw that edge thats bubbling down to the wood. Sanding FG to me isn't the funnest thing in the world. Plus I think that adding a "patch" of fg would make that part weak.

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Tell the Snap-On guy I'm not here!

Well I just finished up today and I decided I'm just going to cover the box with carpet. Is there anyone who could help me have a technique to carpet it?

I wouldn't use Carpet . if you have it pretty smooth I would use vinyl instead.

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4-15" RF T2
6-7" RF Component sets
8 Planet Audio 900d
10 Batcap800
1 250 amp alt
1 300 amp alt
2" sound deadner roof,doors,floors

Question: Did you remeber to put a little acetone in your resin/hardner mix to thin it out when you first applied it to the fleece?

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No I didn't add acetone

I've already ordered carpet lol, I ordered 5 sq yards of it from partsexpress.com Hopefully it'll be enough to do my amp rack and enclosure and false floor.

I went to JoAnn fabrics yesterday. I found a thin kinda carpet material that matched all the OEM panels in my trunk almost exactly. I got 2 yards ($4.99 yd) and a can of contact cement.

Soaked the box in 2 good coats of cement, let it dry 45mins-1hr and wrapped the box.

Work the carpet from the center out, apply heat (blow dryer/heat gun) to give the carpet a good contact with the glue, also apply heat to work out any wrinkles, creases or any edges, I did my entire box with 1 piece of carpet. It was surprisingly easy, and came out better then expected.

that does look nice.

great Job

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4-15" RF T2
6-7" RF Component sets
8 Planet Audio 900d
10 Batcap800
1 250 amp alt
1 300 amp alt
2" sound deadner roof,doors,floors

do you have any pics of what your box looks like right now?